They [the Arabs] can afford millions of casualties, and survive, while Israel can't. They know this, and that's why they don't give up, no matter how badly or frequently they are defeated.
That's certainly the rhetoric coming from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranians (although they aren't Arabs).
Someone said the Arabs are willing to fight to the last Palestinian. This has to be exaggeration - only some Arabs (and Iranians) are willing to fight to the last Palestinian. It also could be said some Jews are willing to fight to the last Israeli.
But it's pretty clear from Palestinian and Israeli polls done over a number of years that it's not necessarily the attitude of most Palestinians and Israelis.
I don't believe that its superior firepower or wealth, or even alliance with the US, has given the Israelis an advantage, so far, but rather, their form of government has.
Israelis are not committed in semi-perpetuity to their governments' mistaken policy: they can vote the them out.
Palestinians are committed in semi-perpetuity by their government's mistaken policies: they have great difficulty in voting it out.
The Israelis have a modern government. The Palestinians so far only have the form of one which is perverted by their kleptocratic, fascist rulers. Power in Palestine is owned by thugs and fanatics and dispossessing them requires they be reformed, jailed, exiled, or killed. It seems unlikely the Palestinians can do this without outside help.
So far, surrounding Arab nations have been decidedly unwilling, as a matter of policy, to help them with this. With the presentation of the "Roadmap" they changed their rhetoric slightly, but not the policy.
The Israelis are willing to "help" them with it but their efforts haven't been appreciated, so far, and aren't likely to be in the near future.
The Americans are willing to make an effort but their efforts have seen minimal effect since, despite comments and shunning Arafat, they are still attempting to work with the thuggish infrastucture which needs replacing, not centralizing.
This is a continuation of the Oslo mistake which installed the PLO as the interim Palestinian "government" which turned out, not surprisingly, to be merely another banal ME kleptocracy intent on minimizing citizens' political headroom and deflecting them from its own defects. (My line to here doesn't differ much from Edward Said's).
In this respect, it differs little from the former Iraqi regime or those of Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Iranian mullocracy. It also resembles them in having "maximalist positions" making it difficult, if not impossible, to negotiate even very poor settlements. This also means the Israelis don't have to take any agreement very seriously because the maximalist position guarantees the PA won't abide by it. Sharon's government, (or any other), can always play fast and loose with the PA because it "knows" the PA ultimately can not, and will not, stick by agreements.
You write, Palestinians can't yield anything important, as long as the Israeli government yields nothing important., but what can Likud - or Labour - give up to a thugocracy? What, today, is different than at the the time of Taba?
They [the Arabs] can afford millions of casualties, and survive, while Israel can't. They know this, and that's why they don't give up, no matter how badly or frequently they are defeated. I suspect many Israelis know it too. That view isn't admitted by Israelis and Israel's supporters, not because they think it's false, but because they don't want it to be true.
I think such an immensely important point with respect to Israelis has to be well proven, as does the primary contention.
A very small minority of palestinians sacrifice their children - but not themselves - a small minority of Arabs join terrorist organizations and sacrifice themselves.
The majority don't sacrifice themselves, don't want to sacrifice themselves, and even those who join Arab armed forces don't appear too willing to be sacrificed.
I think it unlikely the majority of Arabs generally, or of Palestinians and Israelis particularly, want to be sacrificed on this rhetorical altar. "To suffer forever and without limit??"
It has taken a vast ideological armature, a lot of time, and much money, to create a general dislike of Israel and Jews which is only a bit greater than the dislike which would exist anyway due to the injustice in Israeli treatment of Palestinians.
Any reasonable arrangement between Israelis and Palestinians will do much damage to the armature.
The message of sacrifice of millions at some ultimate moment of push-comes-to-shove comes from unaccountable rulers who find it in their interests that no decent solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is ever applied. I have no doubt some of them mean what they say but they aren't permanent fixtures, are they? The message also comes from observers who project the present circumstances unchanged into the future.
Are Israelis suffering from intellectual dissonance on this point as you speculate? Or is it one of a number of possibilities they have to take into account? |
